On the assertion of constructs being used to define, I cannot refute.
On the assertion of constructs being used for perception, I cannot refute.
On the assertion of this discourse being semantics, I openly refute based on the need of personal inquiry into my own logic capabilities, known and unknown flaws included, to assess what it is I perceive and the manner of such.
I never state that anything is more than my own personal experience/opinion, as I can no more be you, than you I, hence taking a position beyond expression and opinion would certainly be semantics.
Simply put, I view time as a hapless construct of a feeble human mind attempting to reconcile it’s inabilities of perception through fallible definitions, In my opinion only.
Gamer, I was thinking earlier (imagine that) when reading Satyr’s most recent post in the natural sciences forum about “time.” He was talking about “entropy” in a manner that I don’t feel makes sense. And here, I see a similar conjecture in your words, perhaps not necessarily a duplicate of what Satyr was getting at, but nonetheless generally of the same subject.
Try this (you too, Satyr):
We imagine that entropy is a tendency of a system to increase in a state of disorder, such that what is organized becomes less and less organized as time continues.
Now check this out.
Since it is impossible to know that the universe at one time did not exist, it must therefore also be impossible to know that entropy exists. Why? Because in order for us to have the knowledge that something is falling into an ever increasing state of disorganization, we must also assume that there are definite points where one state can be called ‘organized’ and another ‘disorganized.’ In the case that we cannot experience a nonexistent universe, as well as lack the proof that at one time it didn’t exist, we can only assume an infinity, and in infinity there can be no real entropy because there are no real points.
detrop arent right now and 15 billions years ago points in time whose disorder we can measure and compare to amounts of disorder in the future? what does the beginning have to do with it?
A “beginning” and an “end” have everything to do with it because without these definite points the sequence is only a line.
‘A--------------x---------y----------------B’
Here, the only thing that that allows you to identify “x” as an individual point is the fact that it is not “A.” The same with “y” in its distinction from “x.”
The dashes (“-”) are what can be considered change, so that not only is the “A” required for there to be an “x” and “y,” but also the “-” is needed so that they can be linked causally and exist as individual points.
‘----------------x---------y----------------’
In this one, unless something precedes “x” you cannot know where it began and you cannot know where it stops. You might say “sure I know where it stops…it stops when the “y” happens,” but this is to say that you are certain where the “x” began, from where the following “y” would result causally. This cannot happen. Its a chain that is infinite unless it stops in its linkage. You need the “A” and “B” in order to have identifiable points in the succession so that you can say that the reason why “y” occured is because of the entropy of the “x,” which can be considered the “change” or the “-”.
Now, if I have no “x” and no “y,” the example would look like this:
‘…[insert nothing]…’
Here the concept of “nothing” is interchangeable with “everything,” since you have no characters and no “-,” and you now have your infinity.
Its a bit of a mind fuck.
Anyway, I don’t think that “existential entropy” can be concieved of unless one can witness a beginning and anticipate an end, both or which are impossible to experience.
Very interesting. To me personally, , I see this quote, although useful, to be ascribing a human quality to the Creator. I think all too often, being the cast of God, (if you choose to use that word), that we assume a greatness of ourselves, that has yet to be proven anywhere in historicity.
If the “the Fall” is to be taken seriously, (some do, some don’t), then our ability to construct anything beyond phantasmagoria of the Creator is limited, to a fault. I think from reading what Nick_A has eloquently posted, (not meaning to assert I am on his level), within a belief in deism, there is the inherenet difference between the human perception of “all of creation”, that inevitably falls short of the actual “all”, and the “all” that the Creator’s being truly is.
My point is that the author of the quote, understandably, and much like the greater human population, try to gain/construct a workable understanding of deism, through limiting “God” to our definitions, especially concerning human traits of importance. How can we maintain an expectation that our views of compassion, wrath, salvation, sin, etc. are in any manner comparable to those of “God”?
Doesn’t bringing “God” down to our level(psychologically only) further remove us from the ability to understand the deity, and further stunt our limited ability to evolve/attain enlightment that might take us back to the “original state/uncarved block”? Couldn’t that be the essential problem with so many people refuting belief?
The essence of God is obscured by the multitude of opinions surrounding it. At bottom, the term can be little more than an amalgam of the thousands of versions it has taken on over the centuries - the epitome of ambiguity and subjectivity.
In the end, one must recognize only this: as is the case with most any ambiguous concept, in all truth, God is whatever one says it is, and thereby necessarily exists: e.g. as a synonym for love, existence, nature, infinity, and the like, to name only a few. It is only when specific versions are questioned do things like agnosticism and atheism have any merit at all.
Yet the all-version-encompassing question of ‘Do you believe in God?’ leaves open the simple truth: Yes, I believe in my God; more than likely, however, I do not believe in yours.
on infinity. We can mark point X without having to know what came before it. For instance, we know the year you were born and it based upon an arbitrary calendar system made by the gregorians. They set the starting point of the calendar arbitrarly where they felt Jesus was born.
So to measure a beginning you don’t have to know what came before it if anything. You can simply say “X was here, so Y is there”.
If “God” is actually a new form of mind and being within a dimention and reality far above our own, then we have barely scratched the surface.
In ancient times: “God” was the ID for the – not yet understood, but considered to be supernatural forces. If “God” is merely something far better and greater then us, I will say:
“Crave and question God. Destroy and rebuild him. Seek the future.”
I think you misunderstand what I am getting at, which essentially the issue of identity in cooperation with zeno’s paradox. If a thing is an effect of what caused it, what caused it must also be idenitified in order for the effect to have its own individual identity. This amounts to saying that while you see the pixels on the screen which comprise the character “X,” its identity is no more pure than what you are forced to describe as that which caused you to type the character itself, but failing to do so. Do not stop at “X.” Continue backward. If you do not find a sufficient cause for the ability to identify “X” then you haven’t found a sufficient reason to call the identity of “X” into existence. Which is to say, unless the universe did not exist at one time, and then came into existence, you have nothing with which to make a comparison or distinction between the first existing thing and the existence of the “X.” The chain is linear.
Sure, you can mark “X,” but, as my point was originally, you cannot say that “X” exists because of the impossiblity to say what “X” is not. Answer me this: when did you begin to describe the “X” and will will you stop describing the “X.” Is there a “W” before it, and a “Y” after it? Show me the line between them.
The line between identities is so vanishingly small its width cannot be distinguished from zero…unless you have an initial cause or beginning point in existence.
Entropy can only exist in a finite universe. Identity does not exist in infinity.
I believe in spontaneism.
If something can be, or can happen, it eventually will.
This means that a creator is not nessisary,
all that is nessisary is the fact that this thing is posible.
The existence of the universe is prof enough that it is posible, and then existent.
Though I think that this question does not make any practical sense, I try to answer it. Let me put in this way, If you mean that God is the truth and justice I believe in Him. On the contrary, If you mean God is someone who is sitting somewhere and has beard or whatever I do not believe in Him.
Yes, he lives next door to me. He complained to the strata council when I left my garbage in the hallway…I had to pay a $50 fine. He’s also accused me of stealing his newspaper a couple of times. It’s not like I complain about the harp music and choir noise that comes from his apartment all hours of the day…not like anyone is going to take a complaint about God seriously though…
As i understand it the universe is infinite. And energy doesn’t “dissipate to nothing” it changes forms. Like when you burn gasoline enrgy you get mechanical energy and heat energy and several gaseous energies. The heat energy is considered a “loss” because it just goes to heat the environment, and unless you have you heater on, you are just heating the air around the engine.
These energies can change states again, the heat can be used to warm us, the gas can be used on plants to convert it back to oxygen.
I think you’ve got a long ways to go to prove the universe doesn’t exist in infinity.
And what would the edge of the universe be? like the old maritime belief that the you’d fall of the edge of the eart? you’d fall of the edge of space?
Now back to X’s and Y’s… we can describe what X is without knowing full well how it came to be here. The distance back to A is unimportant… the dots that lead from A to X… unimportant. Unless you plan on making a time machine to string together all the events to prove that the universe did have a cause and is finite.
i belive i heard somewhere that the universe bends around somehow-that is if you reached the ‘end’,you just be at the other ‘end’. to simplify,some video games,when you run off the screen,you come back at the opposite side,thus the screen loops. what do all you geniuses know/think about that?
if something exists and you know it exists then you have no need to believe in it because it is there (ie it’s existence is a fact).
If you want something to exist but you don’t know and don’t have any way of knowing that it does, then you believe in something.
It’s not a case of is there a god or isn’t there it’s a case of
In order for you to be happy, do you need there to be a god?
for me, i’m happy without having to bow to what some religious person says i should bow to because they have made the personal descision, without any hard proof or just reason, that i should bow to their belief and do what they say.
